Within a company, organization or other enterprise, a plurality of different individuals or personnel are typically employed or otherwise placed in various jobs or positions in order to effectively and efficiently conduct the business of the enterprise. For example, these jobs and/or positions may range from college entry level or starting positions to higher mid-level management or team leadership positions to even higher level executive or board member positions. Additionally, positions may vary in type across different business units or depending on the different objectives of different divisions within the enterprise. For example, positions may vary from sales positions to technical or research and development positions to marketing positions to manufacturing positions to support positions, etc.
It is also usually in the interest of the enterprise and the personnel to meaningfully pair individuals with appropriate positions. That is to say, both the enterprise and the personnel typically benefit when individuals are placed in positions for which they are best qualified and/or in which they are most likely to succeed. Accordingly, an enterprise will often seek to maximize the effectiveness and/or efficiency of its business or other operations by utilizing its personnel so that individuals are placed in positions to which they are best suited, respectively, thereby advantageously exploiting or leveraging their collective and/or individual experience and potential to the greatest extent possible.
Generally, job and/or other related experiences are widely acknowledged as important and/or valuable determining factors to be considered in assessing an individual's qualifications, suitability and/or preparedness for a particular position. An individual's prior experience is commonly a significant indicator of that individual's ability to successfully perform the duties of and/or otherwise flourish in a given position. Notwithstanding its acknowledged importance and/or value, the vast majority of enterprises are not equipped to effectively capture and/or utilize experience information, nor integrate this experience information into various personnel development and/or talent management processes. Although experience has a significant role to play, it is often handled superficially because there is no established approach or framework for capturing and integrating high quality experience information into these processes.
Additionally, individuals in positions at particular levels within an enterprise will often have aspirations or otherwise desire to advance over time to higher levels or otherwise follow particular career paths within the enterprise. Likewise, the enterprise typically enjoys a mutual benefit by advancing its personnel to higher level positions and/or along particular career paths when warranted. That is to say, so as to not be underutilizing or wasting their talent pool, an enterprise will often seek to promote or transfer high performing and/or high potential personnel to higher levels (or perhaps lateral development positions to prepare them for higher level positions). In short, the enterprise often wants to encourage and/or promote the development of their personnel along certain career paths and/or to advance individuals to higher positions. Moreover, if the enterprise anticipates a shortfall of qualified personnel for a given position in the future, they may desire to start grooming one or more individuals for that position in advance so as to be prepared to fill the position when the time comes.
Again, it is widely recognized that the job or job related experiences of personnel has a significant influence on successful career planning and/or development. That is to say, the development of personnel along particular career paths best suited to the particular individuals and/or the successful advancement of individuals to higher positions is meaningfully impacted by the growth and/or evolution of each individual's job experiences. However, heretofore there has been lacking a suitable tool, framework or method to effectively and/or efficiently capture and/or utilize high quality experience information in career planning, development, succession planning and/or talent management applications. Consequently, the vast majority of enterprises have handled experience information superficially and as a result, the quality and/or effectiveness of career planning, development, succession planning and talent management has suffered. More effective capturing, handling and/or use of experience information is the missing component that would strengthen existing career planning, development, succession planning and talent management processes significantly beyond their current contribution.
Consistent with the traditional superficial handling of experience related information, most organizations have been typically unable to provide much clarity on development to their employees, neither in the case of more immediate or short term goals (i.e., ‘next steps’) nor in the case of longer term goals and/or subsequent steps. This can be a significant issue in organizations. For example, employees may often feel bewildered and lost when it comes to getting proper development guidance in an organization. Likewise, coaches and line managers often scramble to find a couple suggestions or ideas for development when meeting with an employee who is seeking development advice. The anecdotal advice commonly provided is typically: lower quality; inconsistent (e.g., across different people providing the advice); has a shorter-term focus (i.e., what is next, rather than what are the 4-5 key experiences that are most helpful or useful over the next five to seven years and what are the best steps to achieve that development); and is typically based on what was deemed important in the past, rather than the development that may be deemed important in the future.
Development done properly addresses shorter term goals and/or more immediate next steps as well as having a longer term perspective (i.e., the next steps should be selected so as to be building in the direction of the longer term development goals to achieve the individual's longer term aspirations). It should be appreciated that next steps may mean progression for some users and lateral development at the current level for other users. In either case, an individual's development typically benefits from having the proper mix and timing of various experiences. That is to say, building the right foundation of experience to maximize the opportunity for future development ensures that an individual does not derail solely because they missed a key foundational experience (that may otherwise no longer be available to them because they are too senior or have the wrong experience background). However, in many instance, enterprises relying on superficial and/or anecdotal experience information and/or lacking a suitable common framework and/or approach for managing and/or understanding experience information, often cannot reliably provide suitable development guidance to individuals, e.g., resulting in a weak or inadequate foundation and mix of experiences which has the potential of stalling an individual's career longer term.
Most employees do not appreciate the range of experiences within an organization, nor do they appreciate the priority of those experiences. Absent a suitable solution, it is very difficult to understand the range of higher priority experiences that are deemed important to be successful within an organization. Without this understanding, it is very difficult for people to successfully manage the development of their careers. Without high quality career development, an organization will often encounter considerable difficulty in attempting to maximize the development of their people and therefore, may not succeed in maximizing organizational performance and/or the financial bottom-line. Few organizations, if any, have a proper ‘development roadmap’ that provides high quality development advice which is relevant to the specific organization (and even more specifically, relevant to the job one may be seeking in any given case), while also taking into account the person's past experiences. Generally, an enterprise is not equipped to provide high quality shorter and longer term guidance to employees, coaches and line managers. Moreover, enterprises typically do not have a common framework that enables employee, coach and line manager to communicate and utilize a common development language that is relevant and specific to the organization.
Accordingly, a new tool and/or method for assisting talent management and/or personnel development based upon an individual's job related experiences is disclosed that overcomes the above-referenced problems and others.